


who will i be (when i wake up next to a stranger)

by andthewasp



Series: the anti soulmate au [3]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Dreams, M/M, Richie POV, soulmate au except not, stanley uris is an actual angel here on earth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-12-07 23:13:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20983976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andthewasp/pseuds/andthewasp
Summary: anniversaries, apartments, newspaper articles, and soulmates.





	who will i be (when i wake up next to a stranger)

**Author's Note:**

> i don't have much to say about this except chapter two ruined me and now you get this
> 
> i just really love this version of these two
> 
> i really struggle with writing richie pov so this probably sucks don't be too mean to me about it
> 
> the title is from the song "20 dollar nosebleed" by fall out boy

_"The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched, _

_they are felt with the heart."_

-Antoine de Saint-Exupery, _The Little Prince_

Richie had a secret.

It’s not a world ending, relationship ruining, terrible secret, but is a secret nonetheless. It sat uncomfortably in the back of his mind throughout elementary school and middle school, then dispersed slightly once he hit puberty and Betty started appearing in his dreams, but remained ever present.

The concept of soulmates, a person you’re bound to love and marry, to have and to hold forever, baffles Richie just as much as the concept of _ not _ having a soulmate would confuse anyone else. The stories, dystopian novels where The Dreams are no longer common and romance stories where two people have to fall in love _ without _their minds being so intimately connected, are exactly that. Stories. Scary thoughts to place in the minds of children to make them think, “man, don’t we have it easy?”

Richie always seemed to think, “man, why is our universe so fucked up?”

Who’s the universe to decide who Richie wants to be with for the rest of eternity? He liked the recklessness of the people in the stories. There was an edge to it that soulmates didn’t have. Once the story ended, who knew if the happy couple stayed together? Maybe the woman would fall madly in lust with the young and handsome pool-boy, instead of the nerdy hero type the reader is supposed to sympathize with. Maybe they’d run away together and drive their car off a cliff instead of getting married and having kids and growing old. Maybe they aren’t soulmates— not in the traditional sense— but for a moment, the stars aligned, the universe had pity, and whether or not they share Dreams had no bearing on anything at all.

That’s not how it works, though.

————————

Betty had always understood. Richie didn’t think she _ believed _ any of it, but she got it. Got him. Tossed her dark hair back and laughed at how preposterous it sounded.

_ What, you sayin’ we aren’t soulmates? _

_ I can’t be too sure yet. But I know I’m supposed to know you. _

_ That’s what soulmates are, silly. _

Richie had kissed her so hard that she had woken up and snapped them out of their Dream, the same lingering sensation of buzzing in his heart that there always was.

————————

When she had killed herself, she had almost taken him with her. Richie didn’t know much about the science behind soulmates, but knew just enough to know that when one soulmate dies, it’s usually a close call for the other half. Modern science has made double soulmate deaths nearly obsolete, but that doesn’t mean much.

The pain wasn’t nearly as bad as the mental image of an unconscious Betty in their Dream room. She had forced Richie into the Dream with her, and spent her last seconds of life simply asleep, her soulmate nearly following. When Richie woke in the hospital bed, barely able to move his head because of the pain, the first thing he had noticed was the absence of the buzzing in his heart, as if it had literally broken in two.

Maybe it’s selfish of him, but Richie had always wondered if the surgeries were inevitable. Betty had grown tired, Richie was wearing thin. This just got them there quicker.

————————

That’s not to say he didn’t love her.

Sometimes Richie loved her so much that it felt like he had stars in his stomach. He sung her songs and danced with her feet on top of his. She would braid her long hair after every shower and then braid little ones into his, smelling of lavender and clean skin, but never made it too far before Richie would tackle her and kiss her deeply. He loved her so deeply and intimately that Richie wondered if he was wrong about soulmates. The love was thick between them, heavy and unwavering.

But Richie had that secret. That longing for _ more _.

————————

That’s what Richie likes about Eddie. He’s the wrench thrown in the plans, forcing Richie’s machine to run in new and exciting ways. Richie loves him, and for the time being that feeling is reciprocated, but who knows what the next day will bring. If the intense feelings that they harbour now will still be present come the sunrise. They laugh and kiss and fuck under the sheets in the dead of night instead of in a Dreamspace. They fought and would spend days without seeing each other as they seethed with anger, until they couldn’t take it anymore and gave in to the apology.

Eddie was more.

————————

_"I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep, your eyes close."_

-Pablo Neruda,_ 100 Love Sonnets_

————————

There is nothing louder, in Richie’s opinion, than bare feet on a linoleum floor at four in the morning.

He wakes with a start, as he is prone to do these days, the nothingness that clings to him as he sleeps still clinging to his senses. Eddie is by his side in a second, tucking his legs underneath himself as he settles on the bed beside Richie. “Shit, sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

Richie has been a light sleeper ever since Betty died. A needle hitting the floor in the next room over could wake him up.

A hand makes its way into Richie’s hair, followed by Eddie’s mouth pressing to the end of the scar that still remains from almost a year ago.

“I forgive you,” Richie says coyly into Eddie’s mouth once he turns his head. “How long was I out?

“Two hours, maybe.”

Richie falls onto his back, Eddie’s hand still cupping the back of his neck, and pumps his fist into the air. “That’s a weekly record, baby.” They kiss once more, Eddie’s body moving up and over Richie to let his legs rest over his waist. Into Eddie’s mouth, Richie says, “you sleep at all?”

Eddie gives a small shake of his head, a conscious effort to keep their mouths together.

“You trying to break your record for _ least _ amount of sleep?” Now that Richie’s awake, he can’t keep his mouth shut, even as Eddie lightly slaps Richie’s side in a gesture that clearly means _ please stop talking. _“What are you at, two days?”

“I got twenty minutes between shifts yesterday.” Eddie leans back as Richie hikes his knees up, leaning back on Richie’s legs like they’re a chair and tipping his head up towards the ceiling.

“By yesterday do you mean two days ago?”

Eddie squints, his hands finding purchase in the sheets on either side of their legs. “I don’t remember.”

That was the problem with insomnia, Richie supposed. Eddie, as smart as he is, lost track of the days. Didn’t know when yesterday ended and today began, when to say goodnight or when to say good morning. Instead, he just didn’t talk about it.

He groans when Richie wraps his hands around Eddie’s wrists, tugging him back down to lay splayed across Richie’s chest, head tucked under his chin. “Come on, Eds. just close your eyes for a while before you leave for work.”

Eddie doesn’t say anything to that, just lies still. His breathing never quite settles into something steady that resembles sleep, but he lets Richie card his fingers through his wavy hair, and sighs into the press of Richie’s mouth to the top of his head.

When Eddie leaves the apartment an hour and a half later, he looks better than he had when he had crawled onto Richie’s lap. Eyes a little brighter, hair a little less flat. The kiss he gives Richie is tinted with a smile that feels real.

————————

_ look at this pic of eddie asleep on the couch _

_ [attachment] _

**stanley the manley: **Cute.

**stanley the manley: **Is that Thor on his head?

_ YES!!!!!!! _

_ they are so perf i luv them so mch <3 <3 <3 <3 _

_ and u stanley the manley thx for answring my txt _

_ YOU CAN ONLY IGNORE ME FR SO LONG _

_ [video call to _ ** _stanley the manley _ ** _ failed] _

_ [video call to _ ** _stanley the manley _ ** _ failed] _

_ [video call to _ ** _stanley the manley _ ** _ failed] _

**stanley the manley: **I’m begging you to delete my number from your phone.

_ NO WAY!! _

————————

Exactly a year after Betty died and Richie’s soul was ripped in half, he and Eddie sit on the floor in Eddie’s apartment watching _ Singin’ in the Rain. _Thor sleeps peacefully in Eddie’s lap, even as Richie sings loudly along to the music, clutching his chest and gesturing wildly at Eddie as Gene Kelly tells Debbie Reynolds how she was made for him. The smile Eddie gives him is dazzling, his eyes crinkling at the corners in a way that makes Richie’s stomach do dances and flips that rival Donald O’Connor’s during Make ‘Em Laugh.

“Do you remember that huge storm when you came to the hospital?” asks Eddie as Richie spins Thor around in time to the titular song. It’s not a sensitive topic, Richie doesn’t mind talking about it, but knowing that he has survived a whole year since then makes the scars on his chest and head ache a little. Betty’s absence felt more like a presence, in that moment, when Eddie pulls himself up from the floor and wraps his arms around Richie’s shoulders to press their foreheads together.

“Of course I do,” Richie teases, cutting himself off do sing into Eddie’s ear, _ but I'm content, the angels must have sent you, and they meant you just for me. _

Richie doesn’t have to look down at him to know that Eddie has closed his eyes when he presses his ear to Richie’s chest. He’s certain that Eddie can hear his heart beat, is analyzing it somehow. They say that people whose soulmates died have irregular heartbeats, even long after they have the surgeries.

If they checked, Richie thinks that he and Eddie’s heartbeats would beat in time.

————————

** _The Seattle Times_ **

**ANTI-SOULMATES: WHAT ARE THEY, HOW COMMON ARE THEY, AND ARE THEY THE ‘NEW NORMAL’?**

_ SEATTLE -- We’ve all read the stories of people who don’t have soulmates, analyzed and studied them for school or had them used as a cautionary tale. Teachers would tell their worried students, “Oh, don’t worry, they’re just stories. I’m sure you’ll get the Dreams soon enough.” _

_ Oddly, though, scientists and ancient philosophers have been writing about those rare few who don’t have Dreams for thousands of years. Only recently have scientists been able to prove that these ancient writings may have been telling the truth. In 2002, Dr. Zack Denbrough published his first novel, “What the Heart and Brain Want”, which became a New York Times bestseller overnight. In it, he detailed the history of soulmates, and in one noteworthy chapter, _ anti-soulmates _ and _platonic soulmates.

_ “It’s becoming more and more common as the years go by,” Denbrough stated in the seventeenth chapter of his book. “Back in medieval times, or before, it’s likely that if you didn’t have the Dreams, you simply didn’t bring it up, or were forbidden to discuss it.” _

_ It shouldn’t be news to those of you who have gone through the American education system that devoutly religious people have a very different view of the Dreams, and go as far to undergo the intense surgeries to sever the connection between two people. Anti-soulmates and platonic soulmates are very different from those people according to Denbrough. _

_ “Often, people who don’t experience the Dreams, or Anti-soulmates, as they have been coined, still believe in soulmates. They’re just not tied down to anyone like the majority of the world is.” _

_ Denbrough has published a number of soulmate-related medical journals and articles, and is currently one of the leading researchers in the world on the subject. He, along with a few other doctors including Dr. Audra Philips, have been working on theories as to why more people have been developing without Dreams or without romantic attraction to their soulmates. _

_ “The leading theory is evolution,” said Philips. “But the truth is that we really can’t be sure.” _

_ According to both doctors, there is nothing neurologically different between those who have Dreams and those who don’t, as well as people who identify their soulmates as platonic. _

_ “I just think we’re living in a more accepting society,” Denbrough said when asked about the spike in anti-soulmates and platonic soulmates in the 21st Century. “People are more willing to come forward and say ‘hey, I love you, and you’re my soulmate, just not in that way’.” _

_ If you or a loved one believes your soulmate connection may be platonic, or if you are among the few who do not have Dreams, you can find out more information at www.antisoulmates.com. _

————————

Stanley carefully cuts the article out of the newspaper and frames it, giving it to Eddie for his birthday.

Richie laughs so hard he cries.

It’s the first thing they hang up in their own apartment.

————————

They were naturally nervous about moving in together, considering they don’t know what their future may hold. That’s what made it so exciting, in a way.

The new apartment is a step up from the one Richie had been living in for the past year, with clean wooden floors and walls that don’t have holes in them. The number on their door isn’t even falling off.

Thor slips and slides around the wooden floor, most of the rooms empty except for the bedroom, which only has Eddie’s (now _ their) _ bed, and the living room, which is filled with various boxes and suitcases. Everything else will come in the morning. For now, Richie and Eddie sit up against the kitchen counter on the floor, eating Chinese food right out of the carton.

“I think the couch would look nice under the window,” says Richie around a mouth full of food. Eddie gives him a look, to which Richie responds by swallowing and continuing, “TV across from it, that armchair up against the wall, my piano on the wall next to the bedroom so I can play my sweet Eddie spaghetti melodies while he sleeps.”

Eddie scoffs, shoving a piece of sesame chicken in his mouth and crossing his legs at the ankles. “What if we put the chair in the corner, the tv up against the wall, and the couch in the middle, with the piano up against the back?”

Richie motions at Eddie with his chopsticks. “I like the way you think, Doctor K.” He tosses a piece of pork at Thor, hitting her in the leg before she goes chasing after it knaw on. “You get that doctorate in interior design?”

They finish their food and toss it into a garbage bag that they keep on the counter in a lazy attempt to keep Thor out of it. The living room doubles as a ballroom when there is no furniture in it, music from Richie’s phone echoing along the empty walls and floor. They dance and slide along the hardwood on their socks, smiling into each other’s mouths during the slow songs and laughing at each other from across the room as they dance stupidly to the uptempo ones.

The dancing tires them out enough that they’re both asleep in their bed by one am, tangled together with Thor sprawled somewhere between them. If Richie dreams of Eddie, he doesn’t remember by the time they wake.

————————

**trashmouth **@richietoziersings

first night in the new apt w eds and thor (peep the frame over th e bed from @stanleyuris) instagram.com/p/rH7dhq98/..

————————

**trashmouth **@richietoziersings

pretty boy and pretty cat admire pretty seattle sunrise instagram.com/p/Ylb23usB/…

**𝖇𝖊𝖛** @beverlymarshanscom

@richietoziersings I think I can see my house from there

————————

It snows on their first anniversary, all of their friends over for dinner to toast to the past year or so.

“How are you feeling?” asks Stan, who corners Richie in the kitchen once Eddie launches into a story about a patient that Richie has already heard.

Richie ponders the question as Ben and Mike laugh loudly from the living room. “Fine, I think.” subconsciously, he rubs at the scar on his chest, hidden underneath his sweatshirt. “Eddie keeps asking me the same thing.”

Stanley gets to work on cleaning the plate that Richie had carelessly set in the sink. “We’re the ones that operated on you,” he says, like that explains anything.

“You sure it’s not because you guys are my boyfriend and close friend?”

Stan laughs dryly, but Richie thinks he may not have any other kind of laugh. “You know the others are all doctors and nurses too, right? They’ll all try to trap you at some point. But _ as _ your heart surgeon…”

Tossing a hand over his chest, directly over the incision that Stan had made so long ago, Richie sighs dreamily. “You sure know the way to my heart, Stan the Man.”

A loud chorus of laughter chimes in through the doorway. “We should probably get back in there,” says Richie as Stanley sets both of their plates in the drying rack next to the sink. “He’s probably just getting to the part about the rubber chicken.”

————————

They’re lying in bed, sometime around three in the morning, Eddie’s mouth pressing over the raised pink skin on Richie’s chest. Or his fingers trace the scar on the back of his head underneath all of his hair, delicate palms draping Richie’s neck.

“I’m glad you’re in my life,” whispers Eddie into the darkness of their bedroom, his voice raw and earnest. “You’re the only real thing.”

His lips move up and over Richie’s, then to his cheeks, across his eyelids, and practically every inch of Richie’s face. “I don’t even know if that makes sense,” Eddie says, his breath warm on Richie’s face.

“Sure it does.” Richie presses his nose into Eddie’s soft hair. “You always make sense.”

It’s not the first anniversary Richie has ever spent with his soulmate, not by a longshot, but this is the first one that feels like something tangible.

————————

There are a number of photos of Betty throughout the apartment, but the one Richie likes the most sits on top of the piano. It’s them on their wedding day, sitting on the flat roof of an elementary school that had been a few blocks away from their venue. Their legs hang over the side, Betty’s long white dress flowing elegantly over her legs and Richie’s hair tamed as neatly as he could possibly get it for that day. The bouquet of lilies sits between them.

Betty’s head is thrown back in a laugh, probably at something that Richie had said if the goofy look on his face is anything to go by.

Richie is playing _ Can’t Help Falling In Love _softly on his ukulele as he sits on the piano bench, looking back and forth between Eddie on the armchair and the frame on the piano. He doesn’t sing, just works out the chords and rhythms as he thinks over how strange his life is.

From the kitchen, Thor meows loudly, followed by the telltale sign of her knocking over the garbage. Richie pauses his ukulele playing to listen to Eddie laugh.

The ukulele is abandoned next to the photo on top of the piano as Richie stands approaches Eddie, forcing himself into the very little space left in the armchair.

Eddie, bless him, lets Richie manhandle him into a position on Richie’s lap, then looks down at him quizzically. “What’s up, Rich?”

“I miss her,” Richie says honestly. It feels like his heart is tearing a little bit as he says it. “And I love you. So much.”

It’s not the first time Richie’s ever said it, but he hopes Eddie can read into what he’s saying. _ I miss her, and I love you, and you’re undoubtedly my soulmate. _

“I love you too,” Eddie says, quietly, muffled by Richie’s hair. It sounds like he says _ I know we’re soulmates, too. _

**Author's Note:**

> my tumblr: andthwasp
> 
> songs mentioned:  
-"20 dollar nosebleed" by fall out boy (title)  
-"you were meant for me" from singin' in the rain  
-"can't help falling in love" by elvis but probably the twenty one pilots version is more appropriate since richie is playing it on the uke


End file.
